Tuesday, July 16, 2013

There is no Off-Season

A few years ago, going to two or three events with your FRC robot was a long season. We leave tomorrow afternoon for our first event of the four off-season events on our schedule. This is after a full 3 regional season earlier this year. That means seven competitions for our robot and our team. We know of other teams that are playing 8+ events this year. Off-season events are not officially run by FIRST, but most of them use official fields and follow all the official rules. The tournaments are normally smaller (besides IRI) and housed in school gyms. They give a lot more playing times to the teams.

Tomorrow afternoon we will load Gamma and our equipment on a charter bus with 3 other teams, FRC#118 The Robonauts, FRC#624 CRyptonite, and FRC#1477 Texas Torque, heading for Indianapolis. The Indiana Robotics Invitational is taking place this Friday(19th) and Saturday(20th) look for us on the webcast. Here is our tentative schedule.

We're excited for match #75 where we get to play with two of our friends from Texas 118 and FRC#148 The Robowranglers. We can't wait to play with and against so many amazing teams that we have looked up to over the last few years.

Gamma is ready for the event. We've upgraded the shooter, made our blocker larger, and made it so our human feed doesn't ever jam.

Here are some test shots from earlier in this summer.

Immediately after IRI we head to Austin for the 2013 Texas Robot Roundup (TRR). This is going to be one of the best TRRs ever. We have 7 teams who will be at the event fresh out of IRI and a huge selection of other great teams from Texas and even FRC#364 Fusion from Mississippi.

We'll have two more off-season events after these next two weeks: Red Stick Rumble on Aug 30th & 31st in Baton Rouge and finally our local event the Houston Robot Remix on Nov 2nd.

These events allow for a great opportunity for continuous improvement and to train our members to take on new responsibilities. These also have workshops and other ways for teams to grow.

With all these events and everything else we do during the summer and fall there really is no longer an off-season in FRC.

- Spectrum

"I think a lot of our team commitment is a silent understanding that each one of us has poured our life into what we're doing." - Claire Carver-Dias